Like most colleges, West Virginia University requires students living in dorms to buy a meal plan, but unlike those in Pennsylvania, WVU doesn't have a profit-sharing agreement with private food service vendors.

That's because the university doesn't use a vendor. Instead, it operates its own dining halls with university employees.

WVU also does something most universities don't. It offers free food to hungry students, with no strings attached and no questions asked.

The Rack is a meal plan for students at the university that carries no contract and no price tag.

"Knowing that students were out there hungry is unimaginable to me," said Jacqueline Dooley, program coordinator at WVU's Student Organizations Services.

Almost 70 percent of WVU students need financial aid to help pay for college. For most of them, that's enough to pay their bills, but not all.

"The parents didn't have enough money to put on their debit cards, so the parents were struggling at home," said Dooley.

In 2010, Dooley opened the Rack with support from student volunteers as a temporary safety net at the height of the national recession. The response was beyond what she imagined.

"We began to receive all these notes (like), "Oh my god, I was hungry. Oh my god, I haven't had food. I'm broke. I ain't got no money,'" said Dooley.

The Rack was supposed to be closed by now, but the food donations just keep coming in, and so do the hungry students -- 200 every month -- looking for help.

Chemistry graduate student Doreen Makaia said her cupboards are bare.

"If you were to go in my freezer, there is nothing," Makaia told Parsons.

"We buy most of our food every month, but we use this to supplement what we buy," student Drew Lovejoy, of St. Albans, W.Va., said of The Rack program. "Honestly, it's a great idea by the university, it helps those students who come here and don't have a lot for food."

Now in its third year, The Rack has become a permanent fixture on the WVU campus, supported almost entirely by volunteers and donations.

"We have served so many students and they are very appreciative," said Dooley.

WVU is one a growing list of universities that have opened campus food pantries, including Iowa State, Tennessee State and the University of Arkansas. UCLA was the first to establish a food pantry in 2009.